Dervla Murphy

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety three and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is a traveller. In her early thirties, liberated from looking after her invalid mother in Ireland, she set off for India on a bicycle. It was a journey which took her six months to complete, cost her sixty four pounds, and was recounted in a best selling book called Full Tilt. Since then she's written many other accounts of many other journeys to become one of our most celebrated travel writers.

Presenter0:52

Now sixty one, she says she'll continue to travel as long as she's physically able. I still get a terrific charge from packing my bag and heading off, she says. She is D'Orvle Murphy.

Presenter1:04

And and packing your bag and heading off Doevler is something that you resolved to do apparently when you were really very, very young. Can you remember the moment when you thought, I know what my life is going to be about?

Dervla Murphy1:15

Well, I suppose it wasn't quite.

Dervla Murphy1:17

knowing what my life would be about, but it was knowing very definitely that there was one thing I wanted to do in the course of my life, and that was cycle to India.

Dervla Murphy1:28

And I was ten and I'd just been given um second hand bicycle for my tenth birthday.

Dervla Murphy1:36

and an atlas by my grandfather.

Dervla Murphy1:40

And I discovered, not being very good at geography yet, but I just discovered that.

Dervla Murphy1:46

You could actually, apart from, you know, getting across to Turkey.

Dervla Murphy1:50

You could cycle all the way from

Dervla Murphy1:53

Europe into India.

Dervla Murphy1:55

And it was one day early in December, just about a week after I'd got these two gifts.

Dervla Murphy2:04

I was cycling up a hill and and um

Dervla Murphy2:08

I can remember looking down and thinking, well, if I went on doing this for long enough.

Dervla Murphy2:13

I'd actually get to India.

Presenter2:15

Well, pushing.

Dervla Murphy2:15

Just tiny the pedals around, yes.

Presenter2:18

See

Presenter2:19

And was it was it more than then just a childish ambition? Was it something that you completely you fully intended to do?

Dervla Murphy2:26

Oh, absolutely. Yes.

Dervla Murphy2:29

And I never spoke about it to anybody at that stage because, you know, I knew what the reaction would be, just uh another childish fantasy.

Presenter2:38

And did you get into training right away? Did you start cycling long distances immediately?

Dervla Murphy2:43

Not immediately, but I did. I mean, I cycled pretty well every day.

Dervla Murphy2:47

quite short distances.

Dervla Murphy2:50

Until my first cycle to over when I was, I think, seventeen.

Dervla Murphy2:55

That was just, you know, crossing to England, cycling around Wales and.

Dervla Murphy3:00

Southern England.

Presenter3:01

So you're a serious cycler from the word.

Dervla Murphy3:03

Oh yes, ooh.

Presenter3:04

But you also did something else, if you like, in preparation for what you were to do, didn't you? You you

Presenter3:10

Put yourself through endurance tests. You taught yourself to bear pain. What did you do?

Dervla Murphy3:16

Well, let's say putting your feet in very hot water, you know, and sort of training yourself not to feel pain.

Dervla Murphy3:23

Tying a string around your finger and pulling it tighter and tighter.

Dervla Murphy3:28

and um learning

Dervla Murphy3:30

in a funny sort of way how to repel that kind of pain.

Presenter3:34

So you did it.

Dervla Murphy3:34

Which actually you can do. Yes.

Presenter3:36

You've developed a very high pain, which has stood you in good stead, as you've broken ribs and

Dervla Murphy3:38

Yeah, which

Dervla Murphy3:39

It's indeed as you've broken

Presenter3:43

Ankles and as you've gone about your business. You don't like being called brave, do you?

Dervla Murphy3:43

Ankles and yeah.

Dervla Murphy3:47

No, because it isn't true.

Dervla Murphy3:50

I think fearless is true, but that's a totally different thing.

Presenter3:50

I think

Dervla Murphy3:54

What's the differe

Presenter3:54

What's the difference?

Dervla Murphy3:55

I mean, if you don't feel fear, you don't have to be brave. You're brave when you're overcoming fear.

Presenter4:01

So you're not frightened at the idea of being plonked on a desert island? Oh, I would

Dervla Murphy4:04

Oh, I would love it.

Presenter4:05

Would you?

Dervla Murphy4:05

Yes.

Presenter4:06

Despite possible hunger and poisonous snakes and all sorts of squalor,

Dervla Murphy4:11

Well, I think I'd be very happy at the end.

Presenter4:13

Yeah.

Presenter4:14

What about music? Is that important in this life view?

Dervla Murphy4:17

Very important, but I'm not knowledgeable about music. I mean, I'm not in any sense an expert, but it's always been very important.

Dervla Murphy4:26

As

Dervla Murphy4:28

an escapist thing and an unwinding thing.

Presenter4:32

Tell me about the first record then that you'll play on your desert island.

Dervla Murphy4:36

Well, I would like Yehudi and Hepzebenu in playing uh the second movement of Beethoven Sonata No. ten.

Dervla Murphy4:45

I have this on seventy-eights and

Dervla Murphy4:49

I associated very much with with my parents.

Dervla Murphy4:53

With our listening together as a family to music, even when things weren't easy, with relationships within the family between myself and my parents.

Dervla Murphy5:04

We could always listen together.

Dervla Murphy5:06

And, you know, that had quite a healing effect because we had identical tastes in music, really.

Presenter6:12

Yehudi and Hepzeba Menuin, playing part of the second movement of Beethoven's Sonata No. ten in G major, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty eight, one of the records that my castway Derv Le Murphy used to listen to.

Presenter6:24

With her parents, your your father apparently had a vast collection of seventy eight sterlers.

Dervla Murphy6:29

Quite a big collection, yes. I still have them, but now the machine on which I used to play them has folded up, and I can't find a replace.

Presenter6:39

And he does it.

Dervla Murphy6:39

And he was rather frustrating of them all sitting in the corner.

Presenter6:42

He was a local librarian. Where was this? This was in the

Dervla Murphy6:45

uh County Waterford in south east of Ireland.

Presenter6:49

which is where you still live.

Dervla Murphy6:51

Oh, yes, and wouldn't want to live permanently anywhere else.

Presenter6:54

And you were an only child because your mother was an invalid. What was wrong with her?

Dervla Murphy6:59

Er, rheumatoid arthritis. I never saw her.

Dervla Murphy7:03

walking or standing. I mean, all my memories are of her in a bath chair.

Dervla Murphy7:09

And um I think I was only about six months old when, you know, she was became completely crippled at the age of thirty four twenty four.

Presenter7:19

So obviously she never had any more children and so you you were doted on?

Dervla Murphy7:21

Now

Dervla Murphy7:24

And I was dole to laugh.

Dervla Murphy7:26

They nevita.

Dervla Murphy7:28

And that was one reason, I think, why.

Dervla Murphy7:31

I enjoyed going off to boarding school after the first terrible week of homesickness.

Dervla Murphy7:36

I suddenly felt liberated and, you know, I was just one of

Dervla Murphy7:41

however many hundred it was.

Dervla Murphy7:43

Nobody concentrating on whether my vest was aired.

Dervla Murphy7:47

You know my shoes were

Dervla Murphy7:49

leaking or whatever.

Presenter7:51

So she from her sedentary position had a great deal of control over the your early life or business.

Dervla Murphy7:56

Alcohol

Presenter7:57

She told you what to do. But she also encouraged you to go out and explore on this bicycle. Yes, I mean, she.

Dervla Murphy8:03

suggested when I was about seventeen my taking off for my annual holidays on the bicycle on my own.

Dervla Murphy8:11

to the continent.

Presenter8:12

But even when you were quite small, a lot younger than that, she encouraged you, didn't she, to to

Dervla Murphy8:17

And

Presenter8:17

And to cycle 25 east down the coast.

Dervla Murphy8:19

Oh yeah.

Presenter8:22

Which

Dervla Murphy8:22

And when I was wondering could I or couldn't I?

Dervla Murphy8:25

She would say, Well, of course you can if you want to. So she

Presenter8:28

Taught you not to be frightened.

Dervla Murphy8:29

Mm-hmm.

Dervla Murphy8:30

Yes, yes. And to feel that if you really do want to do something, then you can do it.

Presenter8:36

You are also a very imaginative child, by your own account.

Dervla Murphy8:39

Ding

Presenter8:39

lay in bed muttering to yourself at night, telling yourself stories.

Dervla Murphy8:41

So leave it not

Dervla Murphy8:43

Yes.

Dervla Murphy8:44

And and during the day. I mean, when I was very small, I used to spend hours standing in a corner with my back to the world.

Dervla Murphy8:53

talking aloud to myself.

Dervla Murphy8:55

and I had an aunt who is a child psychiatrist.

Dervla Murphy8:59

And she became very worried about this and, you know, told my parents that I needed a course of therapy to normalize me and so on.

Presenter9:09

And what sort of stories were you telling yourself?

Dervla Murphy9:11

Oh, about a family of teddy bears that I'd invented.

Dervla Murphy9:16

And they lived in a in a big tree, which I'm happy to say is, I mean, a really gigantic tree, elm tree.

Dervla Murphy9:23

which is still to the god.

Dervla Murphy9:26

And it was divided into little villages. And, you know, I mean, this went on for quite a few years.

Presenter9:32

So you were a story teller even then?

Presenter9:35

And a writer at quite a a young age as well. Didn't you win a local newspaper competition?

Dervla Murphy9:40

Well, yes, but by then I was about fourteen. But I'd known for as long as I can remember that that's what I wanted to do. I never had any doubt about that.

Presenter9:49

So we have record number two.

Dervla Murphy9:51

Well, record number two is reminds me very much of my father. It's Hummel's variations on Shunaminka, which is based on Ukrainian folk dances.

Dervla Murphy10:03

And it's it's very frivolous. I think if I did get a bit depressed on the desert island, this would cheer me up at once.

Presenter11:12

One of Hummel's variations on Schoeneminka for flute trio played by Paula Hatcher, Charles Forbes and Glenn Jacobson.

Presenter11:20

So you led Derv Le Murphy a a happy and relatively carefree childhood with parents who loved you and taught you a love of music and of literature and

Speaker 111:24

Uh

Presenter11:28

Although quite poor, I think wanted to enrich you in other ways.

Speaker 311:30

Yes.

Speaker 311:32

We got a raise.

Presenter11:33

When did it all begin to go wrong? When did you begin to feel trapped by it all?

Dervla Murphy11:39

'Cause when I was about fifteen or sixty.

Dervla Murphy11:41

Because I had to leave boarding school when I was thirteen, well, nearly fourteen.

Dervla Murphy11:48

and come home to look after my mother because her condition was all the time gradually worsening. And this was during the war, and, you know, we couldn't get any servants, anybody to help to look after her.

Dervla Murphy12:04

But I was actually delighted to leave school because I knew that I'd never pass an exam. I mean, I wasn't interested in passing exams. I knew what I wanted to do.

Dervla Murphy12:15

And exams seem completely irrelevant there.

Dervla Murphy12:18

So that seemed to be a great release for a few years. But then, of course, things got more and more difficult as my mother's health became worse.

Presenter12:28

She became more and more demanding.

Presenter12:31

And do you think that that was because she was becoming older and more incapacitated? Or or did she change in personality really and cease to be this mother who wanted only you to be happy and

Dervla Murphy12:41

Not no, that that came rather later when um her kidneys were affected.

Dervla Murphy12:48

In retrospect, I think probably it was a question of the brain being affected by the malfunctioning kidneys.

Dervla Murphy12:56

So that it seemed to me that she was suffering a personality change, because I wasn't thinking then in detached scientific terms, I was just aware of the fact that the relationship between us was going very, very wrong.

Presenter13:10

And she became totally dependent on the market.

Presenter13:13

And she even insisted you shared a bedroom, didn't she?

Dervla Murphy13:16

Yes, and she needed her position to be shifted frequently to to relieve the pain.

Dervla Murphy13:23

which meant that for quite a number of years I never got an unbroken night's sleep and

Dervla Murphy13:29

That got me down quite badly, as I think it would any young person.

Presenter13:34

But also I mean and this went on through your twenties.

Dervla Murphy13:37

Oh, right through the twenties, yes. Because I was thirty.

Presenter13:39

Um it

Dervla Murphy13:41

I wasn't there when she died.

Presenter13:43

So that

Dervla Murphy13:43

Mm yeah.

Presenter13:44

You were frustrated really at every turn.

Dervla Murphy13:46

Yes.

Presenter13:47

Physically, intellectually.

Dervla Murphy13:48

Intellectually, longing to travel.

Dervla Murphy13:52

And I mean, to travel seriously, way outside Europe.

Presenter13:57

How desperate did you get?

Dervla Murphy13:58

Oh, that he does.

Presenter14:00

Did you

Dervla Murphy14:01

And when my when my father died eighteen months before she died.

Speaker 314:01

Uh

Dervla Murphy14:07

I must have had a complete breakdown then, because I actually can recall very, very little of that eighteen month period. I went on the whisky in a serious way.

Dervla Murphy14:16

Jane smoked at very little.

Dervla Murphy14:19

had broken nights' sleep and, you know, was generally um a rag

Presenter14:23

Did you ever think of putting an end to it either by putting an end to yourself or indeed to your mother?

Dervla Murphy14:29

I thought of putting an end to her.

Dervla Murphy14:31

But not to myself, really.

Presenter14:35

But you would never have done that.

Dervla Murphy14:38

I don't know. I mean, if it had gone on for another three, four, five years, I might well have done it.

Presenter14:44

But in the end she died.

Presenter14:47

Was that an enormous release? Tremendous.

Presenter14:51

Tinged with guilt? Not in the slightest. None no remorse.

Dervla Murphy14:53

No reason.

Dervla Murphy14:54

Now

Dervla Murphy14:56

Because as soon as she was gone I seemed to be able to get things in perspective and

Dervla Murphy15:01

to understand why she had been as she was, which I couldn't do while the conflict was still going on.

Presenter15:08

Record number three.

Dervla Murphy15:10

Record number three is um

Dervla Murphy15:12

Part of the andante from heightened string quartation D minor, which is usually known as the fifths.

Dervla Murphy15:19

And that reminds me of falling in love for the first time. I used to play it over and over again. It's quite a complicated piece of music, but very happy too.

Speaker 315:37

Yeah.

Presenter16:29

Part of the andante from Haydn's string quartet in D minor, opus seventy six, No. two, played by the Janicek Quartet, and Memories of Your First Love Dervler.

Presenter16:40

You wrote about yourself at that point when your mother died. It's it's a heart rending sentence. You wrote As a daughter I was a failure as a woman I was ageing.

Speaker 116:44

I don't know.

Presenter16:50

As a writer I was atrophied, and as a traveller I had only glimpsed possibilities.

Dervla Murphy16:50

Uh

Dervla Murphy16:56

Well, I suppose the odd thing about that book, I mean, my autobiography, is that I couldn't have written it deliberately for publication. It was written originally as a record of my early life for my daughter to read when she had grown up.

Dervla Murphy17:11

and also to help me to disentangle the relationship with my parents, because it was difficult with my father too for other reasons.

Dervla Murphy17:21

And eight years later my publisher discovered the existence of the manuscript, which was literally a manuscript, it wasn't type.

Dervla Murphy17:30

And it was he who persuaded me then to publish it.

Dervla Murphy17:34

But had I sat down deliberately to write,

Dervla Murphy17:39

My autobiography couldn't have turned out as it did.

Dervla Murphy17:42

Because I wouldn't have wanted to reveal so much of myself.

Presenter17:46

You'd have been less honest.

Dervla Murphy17:48

Mm.

Presenter17:49

But now you've come to terms with it. Now you can talk about it.

Dervla Murphy17:50

There he is.

Dervla Murphy17:52

Guess.

Presenter17:53

So tell me, when you say you

Presenter17:55

You felt no guilt at your sense of release when your mother died when you were thirty. I mean, was there i in a funny kind of way a sort of reassurance that you knew the worst about yourself?

Dervla Murphy18:06

I think there probably was, yes.

Presenter18:08

Do you sort of touch the bottom?

Presenter18:11

And you you stood therefore, as you said, at the threshold of independent life.

Presenter18:17

What sort of emotions did you feel then then? I mean, exhilaration?

Dervla Murphy18:21

Oh, of course, enormous exhilaration. But also, I mean, immediately I began to plan for the cycle to India, so that, you know, the months following my mother's death were full of practical preparations, as it were.

Presenter18:35

So, as you say, you set off for India to fulfil this childhood ambition. The problem was it was the coldest winter, 62, 63.

Dervla Murphy18:41

I know, that was a very unfortunate coincidence.

Presenter18:44

How cold was it? Describe it to me.

Dervla Murphy18:47

Well, I can remember cycling into Rouen with an icicle a very long icicle hanging off the end of my nose. I mean, maybe that says enough about

Presenter18:57

Did you never think this is ridiculous? It's just been one of those dreams that I'll never fulfil. I'm going back home.

Dervla Murphy19:04

Am now.

Dervla Murphy19:05

No, I d I mean I did think it's pretty ridiculous to have set out now, but I suppose when I mean I had then been waiting twenty years to start this journey.

Dervla Murphy19:15

And whatever the weather was like, I didn't feel like postponing it.

Presenter19:18

You are gonna go.

Dervla Murphy19:19

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter19:19

Even if everybody thought you were mad.

Dervla Murphy19:21

Mm.

Presenter19:21

And they did.

Dervla Murphy19:22

Man, they did, yes.

Presenter19:24

Record number four.

Dervla Murphy19:27

Well, record number four brings me back to part of that journey, my favorite country on that route, Afghanistan. And it's

Dervla Murphy19:37

Babulala, a push to wedding song.

Dervla Murphy19:41

from the region around Kandahar.

Dervla Murphy19:43

and its sung when the bride is leaving her own home.

Dervla Murphy19:48

and setting out for her husband's home riding on a camel.

Dervla Murphy19:52

And I first heard it in Afghanistan and heard it many times because it's a popular song not reserved for this particular occasion.

Dervla Murphy20:02

And what I like about this recording is the the coughing and the spitting in the background. It really brings me back to sitting with them and listening to it.

Speaker 320:18

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 320:23

Chukarma Fuakrawal, Walla La La La, Juparmarwiwa Ya La La Marfuwakra Chiba Yajal Grawa Walla Lalawiwa

Speaker 120:34

Oh god. Yeah.

Presenter20:44

Babulala, a pushtoo wedding song from the Kandahar region of Afghanistan. How did you get away, Dervler, in six months of travel across two continents, spending only sixty four quid?

Dervla Murphy20:54

Well, it just shows you what the cost of living was in those days.

Presenter20:59

But what did you spend that on? I mean, this was early sixties, wasn't it?

Dervla Murphy21:01

Yes, nineteen sixty-three I started out and um

Dervla Murphy21:06

Well, I mean, one doesn't in any case on that sort of journey spend very much. I mean, earlier this year I was in Africa for four months.

Dervla Murphy21:16

And I spent less than four hundred and twenty pounds in in four months travelling.

Presenter21:22

Your material needs obviously are very few. Um and you only need a medium-sized rucksack, apparently, to put it all in. That does mean of course that you don't change your clothes very often either.

Dervla Murphy21:32

It does indeed, yes.

Presenter21:34

You sleep in them happily and wear them happily for some time, weeks.

Dervla Murphy21:36

Muezz.

Dervla Murphy21:39

Well, in in Baltistan actually, when uh I was there with my daughter in the middle of winter.

Dervla Murphy21:46

Neither of us took our clothes off, literally, for three months. Not once. I mean, the temperature went to minus forty at night there, so.

Dervla Murphy21:54

You know, at bedtime you didn't feel awfully like taking your clothes off.

Presenter21:57

What's that like? I mean, do you in the end

Presenter22:00

I feel pretty wedded to them. Do you feel dirty? Do you feel you smell?

Dervla Murphy22:04

You feel dirty in your smell for the first few days.

Dervla Murphy22:08

then after that somehow you don't. The Tibetans say that all the natural oils form a sort of um

Dervla Murphy22:15

Carapace, I suppose.

Dervla Murphy22:18

I mean, you're sealed, as it were.

Presenter22:20

The fibers of the clothes join in, so the whole thing is What's it like when you finally take them off?

Dervla Murphy22:21

Yeah.

Dervla Murphy22:26

Well, I regret to say, I mean, the thaw had just come and um

Dervla Murphy22:31

When the thaw comes, of course little things begin to breed.

Dervla Murphy22:34

So we both had body lights and we took them off. But I mean we hadn't had them all during the three months, it was just the thaw that caused that.

Presenter22:43

And that doesn't distress you or upset you. I mean, that's just part of the.

Dervla Murphy22:46

Well, I mean it would if we'd been wearing them for another three months.

Presenter22:51

And d the bicycle well, certainly the bicycle you went out with in the first place to India is a a very ordinary affair. No gear.

Dervla Murphy22:58

No gears. No, I it had originally uh three gears, but I had them removed.

Dervla Murphy23:06

because in those days they were quite fragile, easily upset.

Dervla Murphy23:10

And they would have been more trouble than they were worth. I mean the roads then weren't as they are now.

Presenter23:13

I'm sure.

Presenter23:15

She had a name, you called her Roz, this machine. It seems to me, reading about the journey, that you you carried her as often as she carried you.

Dervla Murphy23:17

Oh, this machine.

Dervla Murphy23:22

Well, not quite.

Presenter23:25

But you did carry her across raging river.

Presenter23:32

How long were you together? Because you were obviously very fond of her.

Dervla Murphy23:32

Yeah.

Dervla Murphy23:35

Well, twenty years.

Presenter23:38

Where is she now? She in bit.

Dervla Murphy23:40

In retirement in Dublin. But you've still got it. Oh, yes, of course.

Presenter23:40

Yeah.

Presenter23:45

But in the end it's it's not your lack of luggage or any of these other tales that's impressive about your travels. It is your, I suppose, durability is is the word one would think of for it. You know, I mean on that very first trip to India you were set on by wolves and by an amorous curd and you broke three ribs in a fight on an Indian bus in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 124:02

Break three

Presenter24:07

Recently you've broken your ankle and injured your back. Do you ever feel

Presenter24:10

You know, do you ever feel what the rest of us would feel? What on earth am I doing here?

Dervla Murphy24:17

Nav

Dervla Murphy24:18

I mean

Presenter24:19

What do you think you'll do?

Dervla Murphy24:19

Uh

Presenter24:19

Doing that.

Dervla Murphy24:21

Enjoy myself.

Dervla Murphy24:23

Quite simple.

Presenter24:23

Yeah.

Dervla Murphy24:23

Yeah.

Presenter24:24

Record number five.

Dervla Murphy24:27

Well, record number five would take me back to trekking through Ethiopia and its Ethiopian church music, which is the oldest known church music. It derives apparently from the fourth and fifth century Syrian church.

Dervla Murphy24:44

And you can hear the, you know, the tinkle of the sistrum in the background. It's it's wonderfully moving.

Presenter25:22

ETHIOPIN CHUH MUSIC FROM VOLUME ONE OF MUSIC OF THE CENTRAL HIGHLS OF ETHIOPIA, Recorded by Jean Jenkins. Has it happened very often, Dervler, that you found yourself somewhere in some remote part of the world and thought, This is it, I never want to go home again?

Dervla Murphy25:36

Now

Dervla Murphy25:37

No, I always want to go back to Westwaterford. I mean, I'm very deeply rooted there.

Dervla Murphy25:45

I think it must be something very primitive. I mean, that's my little bit of territory. It's nothing nationalistic or patriotic, you know. It's not.

Dervla Murphy25:54

going home to Ireland, it's going home to my patch of territory.

Presenter25:58

It's not materialistic.

Dervla Murphy25:59

It's not material.

Dervla Murphy26:00

And it's a very, very beautiful point of island.

Presenter26:03

Mm-hmm.

Dervla Murphy26:03

Westwater. Well, well, one of the most beautiful parts of the world, I think, but then of course I'm biased.

Presenter26:09

Well, I don't know. You've seen more than most. Um you must also in your travels meet footloose young travellers in search of adventure who are who are contemplating never going home again. What do you say to them? I mean, do you feel very sort of old and wise when you meet them?

Dervla Murphy26:17

Who else?

Dervla Murphy26:19

Bing

Dervla Murphy26:25

I think I mean, if if they ever ask me for advice, which they obviously o don't often do, but if they do, I I suggest that they spend longer in one country and not try to cover the world in a year.

Presenter26:38

And what about their general attitude as to why they're there? Do you think they're always there for the right reasons? Are there right reasons to be anywhere?

Dervla Murphy26:47

Well, I should think their reasons are as right as mine are.

Presenter26:50

You don't think they're running away from something?

Dervla Murphy26:53

Some are, obviously, but on the whole I would say nothing.

Presenter26:58

Do you think you're running away from I mean, are you going to something or are you going from something?

Dervla Murphy27:03

Now I'm certainly going, and I suppose over the last several journeys I've been going away from Western society.

Dervla Murphy27:11

But also of course I'm going towards wherever I'm going to.

Presenter27:16

Next piece of music.

Dervla Murphy27:18

Record number six.

Dervla Murphy27:20

Monteverde is the coronation of Papea, the final duet.

Dervla Murphy27:26

which I think is extraordinarily powerful piece of music and you have to feel strong yourself emotionally to listen to it, in my view.

Presenter28:36

Richard Lewis and Magda Laszlo singing the duet Porti Miro Portigodo from Montevedi's L'In Coronazione di Poppea with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Pritchard. You took a few years off when you had your daughter Rachel. She's twenty-four now. And that was when you wrote your autobiography. But then.

Presenter28:56

Pretty quickly, actually, when she was four or five, you started taking her with you as well. Yes. That was quite dangerous, wasn't it? When you took her to India, you took her.

Dervla Murphy29:00

Yes, that was.

Dervla Murphy29:05

Yes, she had her fifth birthday in India. We left a few weeks before it. But it was a journey tailored to her age in the sense that we traveled by local bus and then we spent two months living in a tiny village in the jungle. I mean based there.

Presenter29:23

So you didn't have to worry for her safety or anything?

Dervla Murphy29:24

Yeah.

Presenter29:25

So you had a daughter but but no husband, never a husband.

Dervla Murphy29:27

Yes.

Presenter29:29

Did you always rule that possibility out?

Dervla Murphy29:32

Well, that it was an odd thing. It was one of the things I knew when I was very young that I'd never marry, in the sense that I knew I would be a writer, though there was no talent showing at that stage to indicate that

Dervla Murphy29:44

I might ever possibly, you know, achieve the writing ambition, but

Dervla Murphy29:49

It was it was knowledge on another sort of plane. I just knew it, and I also knew I wouldn't marry.

Presenter29:55

Why? Why did you rule it out?

Presenter29:57

'Cause these things aren't sort of just in you. They're just things that you decide for yourself, really, aren't they?

Dervla Murphy29:59

Yeah.

Dervla Murphy30:02

I'm not sure about that.

Dervla Murphy30:04

No, I I don't think so. I d I think um it's part of one's destiny and you you just recognize it.

Presenter30:12

You were destined to be without a man who

Presenter30:14

And it doesn't bother you one jot.

Dervla Murphy30:15

One job in the lady.

Presenter30:17

And in all the places that you've visited, remote and near at home, just uh allow me one one of those hackneyed old questions. What's the worst meal that you've ever been required to eat?

Dervla Murphy30:28

Oh, there's absolutely no doubt about that. In Cameroon.

Dervla Murphy30:34

I can't remember now what they call it, but it's made from the goths of fish.

Dervla Murphy30:39

It's a sort of yellow-gray-brown colour, and it is

Dervla Murphy30:43

repulsive beyond any possibility of describe.

Dervla Murphy30:48

And it's served with a a a sort of mass of half-cooked maize dumpling around, you know, and and

Presenter30:56

Worse even than stewed intestine of rat, which I know you've sampled.

Dervla Murphy31:02

Oh, worse than anything. I mean, in a league of its own, you know, absolutely.

Presenter31:07

But you've eaten all of these things and not been sick.

Dervla Murphy31:11

I had very bad dysentery on the first trip, and in a way I think that immunized me to dysentery but I mean it was seriously bad, and I've never had that since, but I have. I mean I've picked up hepatitis in Madagascar.

Dervla Murphy31:26

And this year, malaria for the first time in in Zimbabwe.

Dervla Murphy31:33

You know, I mean, one does pick things up along the way.

Presenter31:35

Nothing that a bit of determination and a good swig of rum can't do away with.

Dervla Murphy31:39

Do you remember that?

Presenter31:42

Record number seven.

Dervla Murphy31:43

Oh, well, yes, this is in case, you know, it's not likely, but I might get lonely on the island.

Dervla Murphy31:49

So this is a dance tune to summon a spirit.

Dervla Murphy31:54

And it's played in southwest Madagascar and then I could have the spirit to keep me company.

Presenter32:31

A dance tune for a possession seance from southwest Madagascar played on the wooden zither.

Presenter32:37

Somebody wrote not long ago that interviewing Derv LeMurphy was like trying to open an oyster with a damp bus ticket.

Presenter32:44

Yeah.

Dervla Murphy32:44

Do you hate being interviewed?

Dervla Murphy32:47

Tested That's when I'm afraid.

Presenter32:50

So now is when you're being truly brave.

Dervla Murphy32:51

Yes, exactly.

Presenter32:53

But why do you think that is when you write so fluently and when you have so much to say? I know.

Dervla Murphy32:59

But my

Dervla Murphy33:00

My medium it is and, you know, it's sitting there just writing, not having to talk.

Presenter33:08

Um, you're sixty one, which means that you've had

Presenter33:12

by your account anyway, thirty one years of independence.

Dervla Murphy33:15

The value of the

Presenter33:16

You obviously came to terms some time ago with the the difficulties of the first thirty years. Do you feel that you've achieved your

Speaker 133:17

Yeah.

Presenter33:24

That freedom and that fulfilment, with as it were your mother's blessing, would she have approved of you?

Dervla Murphy33:28

I think very much so. Yes, I've no doubt about that.

Presenter33:33

And your father?

Dervla Murphy33:35

Very much so.

Presenter33:37

I mean I

Dervla Murphy33:37

I think they would have um

Dervla Murphy33:40

Well, I know they would have been very pleased that, you know, I had some.

Dervla Murphy33:45

Modest success as a writer because my father himself always wanted to write.

Dervla Murphy33:50

Of course, obviously my mother, because I mean, she was

Dervla Murphy33:54

my mentor when I was first trying to write.

Dervla Murphy33:58

as quite a small child she would criticise everything I wrote. I mean, in in the constructive sense and point out what was wrong and how this could be improved and

Dervla Murphy34:10

She was somebody incapable of reading a book without

Dervla Murphy34:14

analyzing it and criticizing it and taking it to bits to find out why it was so good or not good as the case might be.

Dervla Murphy34:22

So I mean that was uh an ally.

Dervla Murphy34:24

Fortunate thing, too.

Dervla Murphy34:27

Have a mother like that who could give you so much of the sort of guidance you were looking for.

Speaker 134:33

Fast track

Presenter34:33

Record

Dervla Murphy34:35

Well, the last record is my, absolutely my favourite piece of music in the world, Beethoven's Triple Concerto.

Dervla Murphy34:44

And if I'm conscious when I'm dying, I'd like that to be played, because I'd like that to be my last experience of being, listening to that.

Presenter35:54

Part of Beethoven's triple concerto in C major for piano, violin, cello, and orchestra, played by Eugene Istomin, Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormondy. And I take it that's the important record of the eight that you've chosen. Not a doubt there.

Dervla Murphy36:08

Not a

Presenter36:11

What about your book, Dava?

Dervla Murphy36:13

I think Pepys's diary.

Dervla Murphy36:16

I mean, we can have it bound in one, you know, the ten volumes bound in so that it's just one book.

Speaker 336:18

Yeah.

Dervla Murphy36:22

And

Dervla Murphy36:23

I mean, that's a whole world, so there's

Dervla Murphy36:26

when I got a little bit bored of the island.

Dervla Murphy36:30

That would be a completely

Dervla Murphy36:32

Separate world to move into.

Presenter36:35

And what about your luxury?

Dervla Murphy36:36

No, there's no doubt about that. I must have a stale.

Dervla Murphy36:40

Because there'll be lots of lovely fruits and berries and what not, and roots, perhaps, on the island, so then I can have something warming in the evening when I've distilled it.

Presenter36:51

Dove La Murphy, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Dervla Murphy36:55

Thank you.

Speaker 137:03

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.